


and before you leave (remember i was with you)

by commonemergency



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Daddy Issues, Episode Tag: s06ep12 Casecation, F/M, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Rosa is in here for like a second, like heavy introspection about kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-12
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2020-01-12 03:11:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18437816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commonemergency/pseuds/commonemergency
Summary: When you grow up thinking that your best isn’t good enough it damages you, and Jake had been constantly reminded from missed birthdays, Bar Mitzvahs, and graduations that he wasn’t good enough—because if he was maybe his father would have stayed.or Amy wants a baby, Jake has daddy issues, but there's a resolve in the end.





	and before you leave (remember i was with you)

**Author's Note:**

> spoilers to the new episode 6x12/Casecation if you haven't seen it. 
> 
> this fic is basically me venting my feelings about it as someone who's got some similar issues to jake. 
> 
> title from beloved by mumford & sons!

When Jake is seven he loses his dad at the zoo because he was too busy talking to one of the mom’s sitting on the bench. Jake is too young to understand what this means—that his father should be watching his son watch the baby cubs instead of watching the way the mother bends over to pick up her own son. 

On that same zoo trip they’re looking at the orangutans, Jake watching in amazement. There’s another little boy next to him with similar curly hair and Jake points it out saying they’re matching ‘curly hair bros’, the kid looks at him with confusion before shrugging his shoulders. Jake watches him stick his head in between the bars, he’s giggling and his mother is telling him to stop that because it’s dirty. Jake’s eyes widen, he needs to do that too, they’re curly hair twins after all! Jake’s smile is big, and he hopes his dad is watching him as he sticks his head in between those bars. The glory of doing it lasts only seconds before he makes eye contact with the orangutan. It looks like it’s coming near him and Jake starts to panic.

He doesn’t understand that the orangutan can’t actually get him, so he starts to yell for his dad to help him because he can’t get out between the bars. He doesn’t understand, his curly hair twin was able to get out no problem, but with Jake as he would learn in the future—everything was an obstacle, and he was the only one who could get himself out of it because people would always let him down. 

His father let him down. 

Roger only comes over because a mom asks if ‘that kid stuck in the bars’ belongs to him, and there’s a moment of shock on his face and it’s not because he’s genuinely worried, it’s because Jake’s embarrassing him. 

“Just tilt your head.” He says, and Jake is panicking too much to do that. It’s hurting his neck and the orangutan is getting closer and closer. He doesn’t know that the ape would have to go across a large barrier and up an even bigger fence. His father doesn’t reassure him that it’s definitely not going to eat him, just that he needs to stop being funny and get out so they can leave. 

A mother saves the day, kneeling down and coaching him out, and when he’s freed he feels himself starting to cry, but he’s seven years old, he can’t cry in front of everyone, they’d yell at him too. So he shoves those feelings down and shakes his head. 

They leave shortly after, his father not talking to him the entire ride home. 

That night when his mother comes into Jake’s room she asks how the zoo went, and he thinks of how much his neck hurts, and he thinks of how lonely it felt, but he doesn’t know how to verbalise such complex feelings because he’s only seven. 

“It was really fun!” He says with a toothy grin, “My head got stuck in between a bar!” 

He doesn’t elaborate on it when she asks. He just says that he’s tired when he’s not he just doesn’t want to talk about it anymore.

When she kisses him goodnight he burrows underneath the blankets, and when they think he’s asleep he hears yelling. 

Jake preferred the silence when it came to their family, it was much easier to pretend that everything was okay when it wasn’t. 

His father leaves not too long after that, leaving an open wound that never really heals. It only festers. 

*

When the divorce is official Jake hugs his father unwillingly because his dad has his arms out open for him. He says that he’s going to definitely visit when he can, but somehow Jake doesn’t really believe him. When he wraps his arms around his father he doesn’t feel what he feels when his mother hugs him, there’s nothing warm or inviting about it, and for some reason, his mom takes a picture of it, like it’ll be the last time she’ll ever see this again. She’s not entirely wrong, Roger Peralta was a wild animal that was incapable of being domesticated, they had to learn to let him go. 

His mother cries that night over a bottle of wine. Jake doesn’t know how to make her feel better, he just grabs a cup of ice to put in her glass and then tries to draw her a picture of just the two of them with the lions that he saw at the zoo saying that it was them. 

_Jake is a soft hearted child who didn’t deserve any of this_ , is what his mother tells all of her girl friends, but damn her for still loving him. 

*

It never really effected him that much when he’s learning how to ride a bike.  
It never really effected him that much when his voice started to change and foreign things were happening to his body that he didn’t know how to control.  
It never really effected him that much when he had his heart broken by a girl, and it definitely didn’t effect him that much when he had gotten his heart broken by a boy. 

He swears that it doesn’t get to him, but when he first starts shaving he bleeds a lot and it hurts so fucking bad because he did it wrong and he’s too cool to ask his mom for help. The best that he can do is call his best friend and ask him what to do. Its when his friends dad picks up the phone and walks him through it that it really hits him. 

His father should be here. 

The last he heard from his dad was that he was getting married to his girlfriend of two months and that they were very happy. Her name was Patricia and Jake has crossed that off of names that he hates now. 

When Jake walks out of the bathroom with tissue paper stuck to his face his mom screams and asks him what he was doing. 

When he says that he was shaving, she has to turn away because she’s slapped in the face with the fact that this was just another thing that her ex-husband missed. 

“Mom, it’s okay.” He laughs, shaking his head, “I’m sure John McClane cut his face his first time shaving too!” He shrugs his shoulders now and then animatedly adds, “If you look at it with your head tilted it kind of looks like a lopsided smiley face, see!” he takes the tissue paper off and showing her and she tilts her head and laughs, pressing a cool palm to his cheek and his chin. 

“My boy.” She says, her face breaks slightly. 

Later that night when he’s getting ready for bed he looks in the mirror at the cuts on his face where he nicked himself, he runs his fingers over it and tries to imagine what his father would say to him. 

_“Well, that’s too bad son,”_ he mutters with a strong pat on the back, because logically he knows his father wouldn’t comfort him. He never had in the past anyway, his affection was a pat on the back and a shrug.

Despite being old enough to shave he still felt like that little boy stuck between the bars waiting for his dad to save him. 

*

When Jake graduates from the academy he hates how naive he is to think that his father would be there waiting for him, looking proudly at him because his son did it! When he sees the empty seat next to his mom his face falters for a moment while he gets handed his badge. He looks to his mom who mouths, _“Sorry.”_

After grabbing dinner with her at their favourite diner by their house he goes out with his academy buddies. 

He made a bet with Rosa that he’s definitely going to outdrink her, and yes, it is a challenge that he plans on winning. 

Jake doesn’t know how many drinks in they are but they get kicked out of the bar for being too rowdy and loud and they’re both walking down the streets of New York kind of holding on to each other for the sake of balance that Jake says, “Fuck my dad.” 

Rosa hiccups slightly before she looks at Jake again, her eyes are narrowed before a small smirk plays on her lips. “Yeah fuck your dad.” 

“Wait, you don’t even know what he did,” Jake says with a laugh. 

Rosa shrugs. “Don’t need to. Fuck him.” She punches Jake’s shoulder but Jake knows that it’s all out of love. 

“Does this count as public intoxication?” Jake asks, breaking the tiny amount of tension that only he probably feels. 

Rosa looks up at the sky like it’ll give her an answer. “Nah, we’re walking in a totally straight line.” 

Jake thinks for a moment before he snorts, “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.” 

His father texts him later that night saying that he’s sorry he couldn’t come, he had a flight. 

Jake doesn’t believe him but he doesn’t care as he tips his bottle to finish his next drink. He’s totally winning life anyway. 

*

Jake had always entertained the thought of being a father sometimes, when it’s late at night. His thoughts are never quiet or peaceful, but there is a kind of lull that night brings. He’ll think about what it would be like to have someone like him running around. He thinks of how much he’d love to have a little mini-me who probably liked cartoons as much as he did. He’d think of all the halloween costumes they could match in, and how he would definitely be able to steal some of his kids candy because come on, what kid needed _that_ much candy anyway?

It’s these thoughts that are dangerous, because he’ll go to sleep imagining how to show his kid how to ride a bike, and if they’d fall he’d pick them up and kiss the boo-boo’s and promise that if they kept trying they’d get perfect at it. He’d imagine his proud face seeing that his kid was able to do it without his help and how all the cuts and scrapes were worth it because they conquered it. 

Jake, in these fantasies, would never let his child have an open wound.

When he starts to date Amy these thoughts and fantasies just escalated until he tells himself that he needed to let them go, because deep down he knew he wouldn’t be a good dad. 

Jake had a fake facade that he put on for everyone that he was confident and had it all together, and while he was confident, he didn’t have it all together, there were times when he felt the inside of him fall apart and the barrier of him and issues got bigger and bigger and sometimes they’d topple over and he’d have to rebuild again- but the thing was, whenever he’d try to rebuild what had been broken it was never really fixed, it was like he put a bandaid over the problem hoping that it would heal itself, but it never did. 

It’s not that Jake doesn’t want kids, it’s just that he’s scared of them. He had always loved the idea of kids, because if it’s just an idea then he’s not responsible for the possible years worth of trauma that he’d inevitably give them when he fucks up. 

There are moments when he’s on the job that he thinks it could all go to shit and he could die, he doesn’t ever express them, but they’re there, and he thinks back to those imaginary kids in his head, what people would say to them if their dad died because of his line of work. He wouldn’t want to put anyone through that, he hates that he has to put his mom and Amy through that. When he was in jail he had heard stories of all the inmates and their kids and how some of them wouldn’t even talk to them anymore. He could sympathise with both sides, and wondered what his imaginary kids would think of him being in here, even if he was accused wrongfully. So were many other men here, too. 

He doesn’t want to put any kid through the kind of anxiety of not knowing if their dad was going to come home.

(Because his clearly didn’t.)

*

Standing in front of Amy and Holt now Jake feels like the walls are slowly closing in on him until they’re forced to be knocked down again. 

When he was putting together his notes he had so many thoughts swirling through his head he couldn’t keep up with them.

 _I want to be a father but I’m afraid that they’ll hate me._  
_I want to be a father but I’m afraid that I’ll want to leave like my father left me._  
_I want to be a father but I’m afraid that I’ll end up just like him._  
_I want to be a father but I’m afraid that my best won’t ever be good enough._

When you grow up thinking that your best isn’t good enough it damages you, and Jake had been constantly reminded from missed birthdays, Bar Mitzvahs, and graduations that he wasn’t good enough—because if he was maybe his father would have stayed. 

When Jake hears the words _start over_ , it makes something inside him that had been scabbed over bleed again. 

The thing was, he loved Amy. He had never loved someone like the way that he loved Amy. She was everything that he wasn’t. He had never met someone who believed in him as much as she did. When there were nights when he had woken up in a cold sweat, thinking that he was still in prison, she would just reach out and hold his hand in the dark and tell him that everything was going to be okay because he was home and he was safe. When Jake gotten his heartbroken by small trivial things she would remind him that his feelings were valid and that it was okay to be sad about it while rubbing his back. She catered to his interests and indulged his fantasies all with her award winning smile that could make a dark void light up. 

The thought of things changing with that terrified him because he always knew deep down that Amy could do better but time and time again she had proved him wrong and stayed. She stayed when most people left. 

He didn’t want to start over, the thought made him feel sick. Looking in her eyes and seeing how much she wanted this and how much he thought about this himself over the years was overwhelming and he didn’t know what to do with those feelings. He refused to let Amy go and he knew that he had a long therapy session waiting for him when this was all over with this new therapist that he was trying out, but right now, in the thick of it, this was painful. 

And all he could think about was that scared little seven year old boy and how much Jake had grieved for him over the years because he never really got to have a father. He didn’t know if having a kid would right the many wrongs, but standing in a room with the bomb had unlocked a vulnerable part of him that he thought he let go. 

_I am not my father_ , he thinks, _I am capable of being a great dad when the time comes._

Closing the cap to the bomb and walking out the door to the bomb squad he thought about what it would be like to come home to someone who looked a little like him and a little like Amy. He thought about all the things that he’d get to do that he never got to do with his own father. He thought of how maybe they’d have a tradition of reading bedtime stories before bed and how he’d be able to get a good night’s sleep knowing that someone out there loved him unconditionally, but knowing that there was a part of Amy that would be in that child, he finally thought, _well what’s not to love about that?_

* 

When Atlas Santiago-Peralta comes, there’s a moment when Jake is holding him that he looks up and he sees himself at seven years old, with his unruly curly hair and toothy smile and vulnerable heart, he nods to him and looks down at his own child and thinks, _I’m going to take good care of you now, you don’t have to worry._

It took a long time for that open wound to heal, Jake is just now seeing the progress and he thinks that it’s good. This is good.

**Author's Note:**

> comments/kudos appreciated!
> 
> fun fact, that story about the orangutan actually happened to me at the zoo! my dumbass thought it would be a good idea to stick my head in between the bars because i saw another kid do it. i do not recommend. 
> 
> talk to me on tumblr @[lesbianperaltas](https://lesbianperaltas.tumblr.com/)  
> i'm also found on tumblr/twitter: **@nihilismdan** too.
> 
> [reblog](https://lesbianperaltas.tumblr.com/post/184127523408/and-before-you-leave-remember-i-was-with-you) on tumblr if ya like


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